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KickStarter Unrest: An Unconventional RPG set in Ancient India

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
Developer
Joined
Apr 15, 2014
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They went with some publisher to get access to Steam, though.

(Lead Developer of Unrest here) I'm going to level with you here - the reason we went with a publisher was:

1. My previous game, Will Fight for Food has been on Greenlight for 626 days. It's currently #81, so assuming it stays that way it will be Greenlit in 2 months from now. That's basically 2 full years to pass greenlight, and I was very nervous about Unrest facing a similar situation. Even if I performed 10 times better, it would be two months to get Greenlit and appear on Steam's store. As a team of 5, we don't have the funds to stay afloat that long (the last two months of development have been out of our own pockets already). I know Valve are opening the floodgates and everything, but I just can't take the risk knowing how Valve time works.

2. The publisher we chose will also simplify the process of getting on other stores, which otherwise would take a lot of emailing/negotiating and some have strange requirements like having a US address and phone (I live in India), or insisting you sell the game at a price they want. Some also require invoices be sent in a specific format, which can be a right pain and cause delay in payments for no good reason.

3. They'll also help out with PR, which in this crowded market can be very valuable. As a (mostly) unknown developer, I need all the PR help I can get.

4. I still own all IP, and their terms are reasonable for what they're offering. Maybe I'm once bitten, twice shy but my entire game-making-livelihood is at stake here so I hope you forgive me if I was a little too cautious :)
 

stony3k

Augur
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470
Strap Yourselves In
They went with some publisher to get access to Steam, though.

(Lead Developer of Unrest here) I'm going to level with you here - the reason we went with a publisher was:

1. My previous game, Will Fight for Food has been on Greenlight for 626 days. It's currently #81, so assuming it stays that way it will be Greenlit in 2 months from now. That's basically 2 full years to pass greenlight, and I was very nervous about Unrest facing a similar situation. Even if I performed 10 times better, it would be two months to get Greenlit and appear on Steam's store. As a team of 5, we don't have the funds to stay afloat that long (the last two months of development have been out of our own pockets already). I know Valve are opening the floodgates and everything, but I just can't take the risk knowing how Valve time works.

2. The publisher we chose will also simplify the process of getting on other stores, which otherwise would take a lot of emailing/negotiating and some have strange requirements like having a US address and phone (I live in India), or insisting you sell the game at a price they want. Some also require invoices be sent in a specific format, which can be a right pain and cause delay in payments for no good reason.

3. They'll also help out with PR, which in this crowded market can be very valuable. As a (mostly) unknown developer, I need all the PR help I can get.

4. I still own all IP, and their terms are reasonable for what they're offering. Maybe I'm once bitten, twice shy but my entire game-making-livelihood is at stake here so I hope you forgive me if I was a little too cautious :)
Thanks for the reply:hero:. Hope this sells well enough that you don't need publishers with the next game.
 

himmy

Arcane
Joined
Oct 13, 2012
Messages
1,150
Location
New Europe
They went with some publisher to get access to Steam, though.

(Lead Developer of Unrest here) I'm going to level with you here - the reason we went with a publisher was:

1. My previous game, Will Fight for Food has been on Greenlight for 626 days. It's currently #81, so assuming it stays that way it will be Greenlit in 2 months from now. That's basically 2 full years to pass greenlight, and I was very nervous about Unrest facing a similar situation. Even if I performed 10 times better, it would be two months to get Greenlit and appear on Steam's store. As a team of 5, we don't have the funds to stay afloat that long (the last two months of development have been out of our own pockets already). I know Valve are opening the floodgates and everything, but I just can't take the risk knowing how Valve time works.

2. The publisher we chose will also simplify the process of getting on other stores, which otherwise would take a lot of emailing/negotiating and some have strange requirements like having a US address and phone (I live in India), or insisting you sell the game at a price they want. Some also require invoices be sent in a specific format, which can be a right pain and cause delay in payments for no good reason.

3. They'll also help out with PR, which in this crowded market can be very valuable. As a (mostly) unknown developer, I need all the PR help I can get.

4. I still own all IP, and their terms are reasonable for what they're offering. Maybe I'm once bitten, twice shy but my entire game-making-livelihood is at stake here so I hope you forgive me if I was a little too cautious :)

This post is the best response to the "publishers are inherently bad for a game" argument that I have seen on this site.
 

Sunsetspawn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 10, 2013
Messages
1,039
Location
New York
Here's a preview that Edge magazine wrote about Unrest.
</shameless sellout mode>

Also, did somebody just say the Bhagdad Gita in this thread - wow.
Our local religitard.

I would recommend ignoring him but, like all devs that come to the codex, you're probably going to have a virtual nuclear assault launched at you, so theologically pontificating blowhards are going to be the least of your worries.
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
Looks interesting. I have to admit that my inner racist recoils at the Indian influences, yet the design sounds intriguing. Though will need some impressions before I'll loosen up my purse strings.

Is someone doing a review?
 

anus_pounder

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Yiffing in Hell
Very interested. :thumbsup: Probably going to cough up cash for the setting alone.

When I first heard 'Naga', I actually thought you meant my fellow hill-men in the north east. :lol: Of course, to be perfectly frank, we don't have much history or culture to speak of so yeah.
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
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Joined
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88
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Interwebs
Is someone doing a review?

There have been a ton of previews by some pretty huge sites (all listed here in a convenient location). We'll send out review copies early next month, so hopefully reviews appear soon after!
Very interested. :thumbsup: Probably going to cough up cash for the setting alone.

When I first heard 'Naga', I actually thought you meant my fellow hill-men in the north east. :lol: Of course, to be perfectly frank, we don't have much history or culture to speak of so yeah.

Personally, I don't know much about the history of the Naga (our north eastern brethren) - but that can be fixed by some research and maybe even a train ride ;) I think every place has some interesting tale to tell, and maybe I'll tell one from there in the future!


P.S. Thanks a lot y'all for the positive response to my publisher post. I was pretty nervous about how it would be received :)
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
Hm, the game is delayed again for some reason.

The new release date is July 23rd (backers will get the game on July 17th) and they'll release a demo on June 26th. (pyroary: Will the demo public or backers only?)

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...ntional-rpg-set-in-ancient-india/posts/855101

Hello Backers,

This is a frustrating post to write, because I've got some crappy news (for everyone, the team included) and because of certain agreements I can't get at the heart of the issue. All I can share is the consequence: elements outside of our control mean we have to move back our official release date. I can't say why yet - but don't worry, (a) it has nothing to do with the game's development, and (b) you'll find out soon enough.

Our new release date is July 23rd, 2014.

Believe me, we're not happy about this either. At the risk of repeating myself, this has nothing to do with our development cycle and everything to do with not crashing and burning as soon as we launch.

On the slightly positive side, you lovely people will get your copies as early as we can provide them, on July 17th (one week before the release date). We'll also release a playable demo of Unrest on June 26th.

We're on schedule, and this thing's almost finished. We'll stream a new set of levels for you all on our next developer stream, which will be on June 1st at 3PM GMT. These levels are situated in Bhimra's central palace, a major location in the game.

584d508f60f23ed7b7e6ad21002e1741_large.jpg


The palace has fountains!

We also made a new trailer for the game, which we're calling the "Character Trailer". It contains a little teaser of each playable character in the game, including the Naga character from one of our stretch goals:



Well, considering Divinity: Original Sin will be released on 20 June, and AFAIK there's no big RPG release in July, it looks fine for me ;)
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
Developer
Joined
Apr 15, 2014
Messages
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Interwebs
Does this have Curry Potions instead of Health Potions?

Curry is almost entirely a British-Indian thing, there's no singular "curry" dish in India (unless it was brought back by Indians who first went to UK and now came back). In short, no :P
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
Developer
Joined
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Messages
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What kind of rights are attributed to women in the gameworld?

....I don't understand the question? Is this about the game's code, or the social system in ancient India, or something else - could you elaborate?
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
Developer
Joined
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Messages
88
Location
Interwebs
What kind of rights are attributed to women in the gameworld?
....I don't understand the question? Is this about the game's code, or the social system in ancient India, or something else - could you elaborate?
Hint:SJW.

Well, the protagonist in the demo is a woman, and the scenario is based on inter-caste relations. How many rights do women have in ancient India is in fact one of the things the demo touches on briefly.

The choice of what to do in the situation is left to the player, hence I would recommend both of you check the demo out and make up your mind yourself :)
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
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Messages
28,237
Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
What kind of rights are attributed to women in the gameworld?
....I don't understand the question? Is this about the game's code, or the social system in ancient India, or something else - could you elaborate?
Hint:SJW.

Well, the protagonist in the demo is a woman, and the scenario is based on inter-caste relations. How many rights do women have in ancient India is in fact one of the things the demo touches on briefly.

The choice of what to do in the situation is left to the player, hence I would recommend both of you check the demo out and make up your mind yourself :)
I would, but uni blocks Steam. Bought the game anyway, so no issues.
 

pyroary

Ubisoft Abu Dhabi
Developer
Joined
Apr 15, 2014
Messages
88
Location
Interwebs
pyroary, I am unable to launch the Unrest demo on Linux. I'm looking at the installed game files, and I noticed that no shared libraries are included, and that the Unrest binary cannot find the SDL2 and boost libraries, which are expected to be in /usr/lib. I could install the SDL libraries easily, but my package manager does not have version 1.54 of Boost, only 1.55.

You should be able to package the SDL2 libraries with your game and set LD_LIBRARY_PATH to the directory containing .so files (I think the Steam Runtime should take care of this?). You may be able to do the same for the Boost libraries, but I'm not sure if their license permits this.

Hm, that is strange. I'll work on a fix for this.
 

ColCol

Arcane
Joined
Jul 12, 2012
Messages
1,731
So, thoughts anyone?

Some minor spoilers-

With Unrest its main strength will the multiple paths that you can take a character. I don't think the demo really convinced me yet if the game will work well in this regard. In the demo You can get married, or escape, or refuse (possibly, I haven't tested out all these possibilities yet). Yet, in the demo I am led to believe you will end up in the city no matter what. Also, for a game that is strongly text or story focused there are some areas that seem lacking. For example, after completing a couple of quests I was disappointed that there was no response from the quest giver. I could not tell the uncle I convinced the aunt to not ask for more food, I could not tell the father how his toys have found a new costumer. Yet, this is only a minor complaint.
---

I'm also curious about Traits, they seem more like a reflection of your play-style or an element that helps flesh out the starting story, rather than something that will impact the game world. One of my traits was opportunist. Will this have any future impact? Or does it just show that at one point I took an action that showed I was an opportunist.


(Note- I can't lie, I did laugh when I clicked traits and expected to see stat based traits, but instead saw that my character was both a loner and resentful)

Overall, I am interested enough that I will likely buy the full game. At the same time it should be noted that this game will probably be of more interest to adventure game fans than rpg fans.
 
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